BEHAVIOR CHANGE TACTIC
Priming
Priming in behavioral interventions typically refers to attempting to influence someone's behavior by brief exposures to certain words, images, sounds, or other stimuli beforehand. In cognitive psychology, priming effects have been found to improve the speed of processing related information (for example, naming an image when previously shown a related image vs. an unrelated one). Similarly, reminding someone of how to do a behavior or its consequences can be a way to influence them a brief while later by making this information more available in memory. Notably, several well-known priming studies have failed to replicate and it may be a less potent technique than previously believed. At the very least, priming should be considered to most likely impart effects only in the short term.
Studies involving Priming
PAPERS
Signing At the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-Reports in Comparison to Signing At the End.
BEHAVIOR
Ethics & Compliance
TACTICS
Priming, Moral Suasion
PAPERS
Being surveyed can change later behavior and related parameter estimates’
BEHAVIOR
Public Safety, Healthcare Consumption, Other
TACTICS
Priming
PAPERS
Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees.
BEHAVIOR
Other
TACTICS
Increase Salience, Priming
Related behavior change tactics
TACTICS
AI or Chatbot
Using a chatbot or simulated conversational interaction.
TACTICS
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is a therapeutic approach originalled developed by Steven Hayes. It borrows from previous concepts like cognitive behavioral therapy and Morita therapy. The principles of ACT are fairly systematic and lend themselves well to program design, finding empirical support in adaptations like 2morrow's smoking cessation and pain management interventions.
TACTICS
Active Choice
Active choice, sometimes referred to as enhanced active choice or forced choice, refers to removing default options and often increasing the salience of potential decisions through emphasizing the consequences of one or more of the options. Coined by Punam Anand Keller and colleagues in 2011, it was originally intended to address concerns around paternalistic nudging for use in situations where forcing the default option may be considered unethical. In one of the original studies, CVS customers were given the choice to enroll in automatic refills of medications via delivery. The choices they were presented were ""Enroll in refills at home"" vs “I Prefer to Order my Own Refills.”
TACTICS
Automation
Automation refers to having another person, group, or technology system perform part or all of the intended behavior. A prominent example is Thaler & Bernartzi's Save More Tomorrow intervention, which invested a portion of employees' earnings into retirement funds automatically and even increased the contribution level to scale with pay raises. Other examples include automatically scheduling medical appointments so the patient needn't do it themselves and mailing healthy recipe ingredients to the person's home to reduce the burden of shopping.
TACTICS
Behavior Substitution
Behavior substitution refers to attempting to eliminate a problematic behavior by replacing it with another one. Often, the substituted behaviors are intended to have similar sensory qualities (e.g. drink flavored sparkling water instead of soda). The goal is typically to disassociate the original behavior from its cue, enabling the more positive behavior to be triggered automatically.
TACTICS
Behavioral Activation (BA)
Behavioral activation is a therapeutic approach that typically pairs activity scheduling with either monitoring tools or goal-setting. For example, someone might aim to balance activities they "should" do but underperform, like self-care behaviors, with activities they enjoy. Users of this technique may also track which activities cause certain cognitions or affective states, like those associated with depression.